The Human Caterpie
by Bad Fan Fiction Jihadist
Summary: Human Centipede Crossover. Pikachu is sick. While in search of help, Ash and company find their way to the labyrinthine lab of mad professor Thomas Heiter. Rated M for graphic situations and existential terror.


Ash was having the dream again.

Everywhere there was cataclysm. It squashed the breath out of him, crushed and souped him until his guts were in his skin was in his powdered skeleton. His pastemembrane was squeezed through the crevices of the cataclysm. He tried to wrap his toes around its curves but nothing had enough substance to hold him in place. He slugged past the pastemembranes of building husks and pseudotrees, pod people slugging with him.

The pod people looked as Ash felt: empty and faceless like model molds. They droned in loud voices, round sounds rebounding and canceling each other out. The pastemembrane of an OLD MAN wheezed in Ash's path. It buzzscreamed without focus. Vowels devoured consonants. Ash tried to make words, but Cataclysm gripped his lips. "YES" and "NO" went his buzzscream, broadening and swirling into a dirge of "ECHO."

Cataclysm crackled through Ash, tingling his orifices and pores. It dribbled out his mouth in creamy cold sickness, through his skin, between his buttocks. A wave of nausea hit and a blast of cataclysm spewed from his mouth, sinking heavily downwards. There was a moment, just as the force of this vomit-stream began to send him corkscrewing backwards, where Ash wondered what gave the spew the substance it needed to sink down to the firmament below the static. The last of this thought passed through the meager silk of Ash's mind as he corkscrewed onto his back, and for the first time found himself looking straight upwards.

Giant thumbs. A face that broke the sky. Ash wanted to scream, but his chest contained nothing.

Ash noticed the tension first. The air was a few degrees warmer than it actually was. It stuck to his face, itched in his hair, twisted all of his clothes so that they cut into his skin. Misty sat in the front, arms crossed, eyelids closed except for a thin, black line that stared at Ash in the rear-view mirror. Ash rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Misty's eyebrows dug a little deeper. "What?" Ash asked. Rain was pounding on the roof of Brock's jeep. Its wheels spun impotently. Misty squeezed the handles of her seat and said nothing.

"What?" Ash reiterated, angrier now. Pikachu puffed shallow breaths in the seat next to him. Its fur had begun to fall out in patches. Wipers scraped the windshield, but the rain came down more heavily than they could keep up with. Pikachu coughed wetly in the seat, leaving a spot of blood on the upholstery. Ash choked back a sob.

"How can you sleep, at a time like this?" Misty asked. Her voice was thin, like piano wire. Thunder boomed too closely, rattling the car. Ash bit his tongue to help hold back his tears. Blood drained into his throat. Misty's voice began to shake and amplify. "I'm just wondering-" she paused. Her eyes began to moisten. She took a deep breath and Ash looked at her reflection and her face was wrinkled and bright red and awful as she choked out her words. "Wondering why you can't be damned to look after Pikachu properly." Her voice was getting louder. "Wondering why you can't be damned to stay awake in what might be its final hours." She was screaming, sweating with the hugeness of her voice in the hot and tense jeep. "Wondering why you can't be damned to do a single useful thing while we drive in the middle of nowhere looking for someone who can help! Wondering-"

"Quiet!" Brock shouted, finally. Thunder again. The sobs forced themselves through Ash, who buried his face in his knees. Pikachu whimpered in its sleep. The wheels whirred one last time. Brock cursed. "It's useless. The jeep is dead." He pulled the hood up on his poncho. "We'll have to go on foot." He turned off the ignition and jumped out of the car. Misty quietly joined him in the rain.

"C-c'mon little buddy," Ash managed, scooping Pikachu up in his coat. "Just a little bit further." The creature shuddered weakly.

The sound of the rain was ass-shattering. It didn't matter where Ash looked- he could see only storm and shadows. In the near distance, already partially swallowed by Fog, Brock pressed forward, moving fast enough that Ash was having difficulty keeping up. Misty seemed to be having trouble as well, but every time Ash neared her side she'd surge away almost immediately. He held Pikachu close.

Ash's fingers were dead with cold by the time Brock stopped, announcing a light up ahead. It glowed pale and green behind dark branches, and the group desperately surged forward. The hill leading up was sleek and steep, and Ash nearly crushed Pikachu as the mud gave up beneath his feet. He grit his teeth and pressed forward, thankful that Misty and Brock were too distracted by the hill to see his failure.

Relief jolted Ash as it became clear that the green light came from an otherwise darkened house. A car was in the driveway- an old white van with a fading pokeball symbol on the side. Brock slammed his fist against the front door, yelling for help.

Something moved inside. With an almost quaint creak the door opened, revealing the silhouette of a man. Ash squinted to try and see his features through the shadow of the green light, but nothing seeped through. He tried to say something, but couldn't find his voice under the scrutiny of the faceless man. Brock interjected. "Sir! We need to get to a Pokemon center in Hiun City. I don't know if we have much time."

The figure paused before nodding slowly. He turned to let the threesome in, and the light touched his profile. He squinted his bulbous eyes, as if to contain them. His hair was grey and short, his face rectangular and fleshy. His mouth turned upwards slightly, though it seemed wrong to call his expression a smile. He closed the door behind them. "Please." He spoke with a meticulous German accent. "Have a seat."

"Sir, our Pikachu-" Misty began. The German raised a hand to silence her.

"No need. Your Pikachu is very lucky." He bent down to pat it on the head. "You've brought it to the home of known other than Professor Heiter."

Brock gasped. "Do you mean-" the man nodded and curled his mouth again. Brock put his hand to his face and sat down, dizzy with relief. Heiter grabbed Pikachu from Ash's arms.

"Hey!" Ash choked, bleary-eyed and confused. "What are you doing with Pikachu?"

"Quiet, Ash!" Brock snapped. "This is Professor Thomas Heiter- he's an expert in Pokemon medicine." Heiter took Pikachu into another room. Ash stood frozen, unsure if he should follow him. Pikachu turned its head slightly to watch Ash as it disappeared behind the doorway, black eyes twisting in confusion. Ash bit his lip. "Don't worry, Ash. Heiter's the one who found the cure to the Wailmer-Skitty Hybridization Immunodeficiency Syndrome. If anyone can figure out what's wrong with Pikachu, it's him."

Ash sat down, though his ears followed the disappearance of Heiter's footsteps. They clipped along merrily for too long, before disappearing behind some hallway. Why did Heiter have to take Pikachu so far? Ash looked down at his arms, now empty. Pikachu had shed some of his frayed pale fur into Ash's hands. "But are you sure he's trustworthy?"

Misty glared. "Are you really one to ask? You heard what they said at Pikachu's last Pokemon Center appointment- what Brock said. And you kept feeding him those cheap, nasty potions." Ash's shoulders sagged further. Misty inhaled as if she was about to say more, but Heiter's footsteps began to get nearer once again.

When the doctor re-entered, he carried a tray with three glasses of water and a plate of cold sausages. His lips curled around his white teeth. "Your Pikachu will be fine, now. I've set him up in a special incubator." Ash's stomach flopped. They'd needed someone to know what was wrong, someone to take control and make Pikachu better. But now Ash could only think of how he'd failed, how he needed to turn to someone else after his mistake. The doctor set the tray of sausage and water down in front of them. "It is nasty out, yeah? You three must be famished. Please, it would be my pleasure." The strange meat-tubes were foreign to Ash, though he'd heard of them before. He remembered something about cast-off meat and intestines. But, now that the professor mentioned it, he realized he hadn't eaten in ages. He grabbed a bite of sausage and washed it down with a drink of water. Misty and Brock followed suit.

"This is delicious, Professor." Misty said politely. In fact, the meat tasted strange, as if it was laced with some strange preservative. "We really can't thank you enough." The Professor laughed and leaned backwards, watching the three intently. His face was getting fuzzy.

"Doctor, what's in the…" Brock shook his head, blinked his eyes repeatedly. "How did you make these?" Misty collapsed. Brock stood up in shock, before slowly falling to his knees. Ash looked up at the Professor's face right before everything turned black. His smile seemed real, now. And his eyes were fully open.

When he awoke, Ash noticed that he didn't feel his Pokeballs hanging from his belt. Worse, he realized he wasn't wearing a belt- or anything else. He struggled to open his eyes. The light was bright. Something was on his wrists and ankles. He rasped for breath. How long had he been out? Misty and Brock lay strapped to the beds next to him. In front of them, Heiter leaned against a slideshow projector, smiling as if he had all the time in the world.

"What is this?" Brock asked. His voice was hazy and his arms were limp. He didn't struggle against the restraints. The Professor said nothing at first, merely clicked on the slideshow projector. On a screen behind him glowed an image: three human silhouettes, standing on a white background. The silhouettes were empty and the white of the negative space around and behind them was dazzling. Ash remembered something he had been told as a young child about how white contains all of the colors melded together and made indistinguishable.

Heiter clicked to the next slide, showing the silhouette of an Abra. "Not all Pokemon are born complete," he began. His voice was triumphant- zealous. "Most are born in weaker larval stages that can only complete their maturation when certain conditions are met. These larval Pokemon consistently under perform in comparison to their more complete counterparts, both mentally and physically. Many trainers have noted dramatic changes in the personalities of their evolved Pokemon, and experimental dissection-" he clicked the slide again, casting the room in red. On the screen was an image of a half-formed creature with its head sawed open and its brains spilling out. "-of an Abra mid-evolution shows strong evidence that the complexity of key brain structures expands considerably during the maturation process, particularly those parts of the brain pertaining to imagination and judgment as well as memory and emotion. In short, this means that completed Pokemon are neurologically capable of living more meaningful lives than their larval counterparts."

Misty growled. "We didn't ask for a slideshow, asshole! We asked what you wanted from us!" Time solidified. The Professor turned slowly to face Misty, recontorting his face, piece by piece, from a smile into a stone grimace. He pressed a second button on his slide show projector and hot electricity burst through Ash, Brock and Misty. Ash's skin erupted in pain as his chest seized and contracted. Brock and Misty bucked wildly up and down, their sweat sizzling off their skin. Ash felt his eyeballs beginning to boil before the electricity finally stopped, and he slammed down into his seat, floating in his pain.

The Professor projected the silhouette of a Diglet and continued. "Some larval Pokemon are so incomplete that a lone individual cannot grow into a neurologically or biologically complete adult. Only by sacrificing their own worthless identities and becoming a composite creature can they achieve true growth. Now." His smile returned. The next slide depicted three Diglet silhouettes and the three human silhouettes from before. "Recent experimentation indicates that though human beings share a common line of descent with Pokemon, idiosyncrasies within the species set us apart- our physical structure is incompatible with Pokeball technology, we cannot breathe fire, cannot utilize psychic energies, etc. But what if these differences resulted from a regression, rather than an evolution, within the human species? What if we have ourselves become larva, and need to evolve in order to begin the process of completing ourselves?"

The screen shifted once more. Now, the three silhouettes were joined together in a line, hunched over on their hands and knees. Their mouths joined to each other's anuses, and a vibrant yellow line ran through the three of them, connecting them. Ash stared. In the communication between his drug-hazed brain and his half-exploded eyeballs, that ribbon of color looked more real than everything else in the room, except for the Professor's hard, clacking teeth. "Behold," Heiter concluded, "the first stage in human evolution. It is a crawling creature, incapable of standing upright and sharing a single digestive tract to force its components to attune themselves neurologically in the same manner as the evolved Dugtrio. It is my conviction that, with stern training and experimentation, such a creature may even mature further, reaching successive stages in its development. What you three shall help me accomplish, dear larvae, is this: my Human Caterpie."

They screamed, of course. Like wild monkeys dragged into cages, they wailed and they gnashed and they sobbed for mothers that still wandered stupid out in some jungle. Daintily, the Professor approached Brock and asked for him to calm down. When Brock spat on his smock, he shook his head and jabbed an enormous needle into Brock's neck. Brock's eyes quickly milked over, and he slumped backwards slightly, unconscious. Misty followed next, and when the doctor approached Ash he paused and ran a hand through the boy's hair.

"Your eyes look grey." His voice was warm, almost fatherly. Ash suddenly felt very cold. "You won't have to worry soon, my larva. Everything will feel better soon."

Before the needle broke his skin, Ash asked, "Will Pikachu be okay?"

Professor Heiter smiled. "It will be better than okay."

There was a grand shadow in the pastemembrane this time. It hovered above Ash, though in this space there was no "up." Except, hadn't there been thumbs? A face? Ash couldn't remember. Something was gone, now. The Cataclysm was different. A long, yellow stretch of intestine dangled from the sky in front of Ash. It ended in a set of teeth- they looked like Heiter's.

"DID YOU ENJOY THE SAUSAGE?" the intestine asked. There was a clarity to its BuzzDrone, like it was speaking on behalf of something grander. A pig sphincter served for lips around the teeth.

For once, Ash's only words could serve it here. "NO," he replied.

The pig sphincter twisted into something reminiscent of Heiter's smile.

A flash of waking. Ash's teeth in a tray next to his head. Bright light. An awful taste. Heiter loomed above. Ash tried to ask to see Pikachu, but his words were muffled- he could only talk out of the corner of his mouth. He didn't dare look down. Heiter mumbled something before jabbing the boy with another round of tranquilizer.

_Can't look down. Can't look down_, the boy thought. His eyes clouded over without drifting down to his lips.

It wasn't. It couldn't. It was.

That was Brock's ass crack, practically smothering Ash's nostrils. His brown meat was pressed close to Ash's face, and Ash could only see by peering over the small of Brock's back. Brock was sobbing, trying in vain to drag his new bulk, straining his tender and recently stitched anus with every pull. Ash felt a muffled scream in his colon, and though he couldn't turn his head, he knew where Misty was.

They were strapped to an experimental surgical table, stretched out on their sides and haphazardly tied down. Brock was trying to work his hands out of the straps. Ash attempted to help, only to find that his hands had been stitched to the bottom of Brock's knees. Heiter's footsteps echoed in the hallway.

"You fucker!" Brock screamed. "You miserable perverted nazi! I'll shove your face in your own asshole, motherfucker!" Ash could feel Brock's pulse quickening as he got angrier. His sweat trickled around Ash's mouth and down his chin. The smell was terrible. Heiter entered, smiling. He carried another plate of sausages.

"Lunch time!" He announced gingerly. He moved to cram a sausage in Brock's face. Brock attempted to bite his finger, and he shook his head. "Remember, you're eating for three now. If you refuse to eat, your friends starve with you." He looked Ash in the eye. "Of course, you can't live if all the nutrients have been digested out- thankfully, it is possible to inhibit the digestive efficiency of the first two larvae, to ensure all components are nourished."

"Fmrmmm!" Misty yelped.

"Yes! Isn't that exciting, sweetie? Now, you-" he pointed another sausage in Brock's face. "Hungry?"

Ash's stomach growled. He wondered how long he'd been out for, how long since his last meal. He realized he'd never eat undigested food again- only whatever shit/food mix Brock's diminished guts could extrude. His tired tears trickled past his nose, circling around his stretched lips and dribbling down Brock's penis. Brock shuddered. Heiter jabbed the sausage in his face again.

Brock, scowling, placed his lips around the sausage. Then with a defiant sputter he spat it directly into Heiter's eye. As the professor brought his hands to his face in surprise, a commotion stirred behind Ash and the world tipped beneath him. Cold linoleum bruised his side as he slammed to the ground, knocking into a tool tray and sending a glass cabinet toppling on top of the professor. Misty let out a squeal of triumph, only to turn to incoherent mumbling as Heiter leapt from the cabinet's path. Shards and slivers exploded in a prismatic cloud, fragments digging into Ash's eyelids, shoulders and hair. Heiter glared, the sausages scattered onto the floor, his skin largely untouched by the burst of shards.

Ash attempted to right himself, but the movements of the Human Caterpi were clumsy and uncoordinated. Misty and Brock zigged and zagged in opposite directions, twisting Ash's spine and causing his right arm to sprawl out from under him, slamming him against the glass shards again. He panted for breath, but there was no oxygen to be found inside Brock, and so he had to hyperventilate through his strained and insufficient nostrils.

Heiter crunched over to the fallen experiment, kicking a cloud of glass shards at its exposed underbelly. He grabbed a particularly large glass shard and held it next to Misty's right eye. "You misunderstand how uncoordinated you are. It makes you look foolish." The tip of the shard broke Misty's skin. She gasped. A single red line traveled along the bridge of her nose. Heiter stared into her eyes until they started to well up with tears. He drew the glass shard away. "Remember that," he whispered. The professor plucked a sausage from the ground and strode over to Brock. "Eat." It was embedded with tiny bits of grit and glass and shrapnel. Wordlessly, Brock took a bite. He did not grimace as the tainted meat shredded his mouth and sent blood percolating down his throat. He did not stop glaring as he swallowed at the professor, mouth full of blood.

Satisfied, Heiter stood. "Coordination will come with time," he said chipperly. "Worry not." With that, he left the room, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Brock tried to escape again, of course. He had reminded Ash of Pikachu, told him he couldn't be safe with this man, but Misty remained rooted. When they tried to drag her, they heard the glass crunching against her exposed and unmoving skin, and her silent resignation to the pain scared them into stopping, though they were still too clumsy to walk, even after four hours' practice. Learning was becoming more difficult for Ash as well, for hunger had begun to gnaw at him until he couldn't think of much else. He worried there'd be no respite, until Brock gave his first warning.

"Ash, I don't know how much longer I can last." Ash didn't have to ask what Brock meant. Brock couldn't bring himself to defecate in Ash's mouth- how could he?- but even his control would only last so long. The prospect was quickly becoming inevitable. Ash was unsure what to think. Of course he didn't want Brock to shit in his mouth, but he was getting so hungry…

Heiter's teeth were exposed when he entered hours later, and so Ash could tell the professor had anticipated this exact struggle. He stooped down to scrutinize his creation. "You are proving difficult, hm? Well, no matter. I have a surprise for you." From his pocket, the professor produced a pokeball. "I was surprised to see how little use this ball had received." He activated the ball and it emitted a string of red light. "The species is renowned for moodiness, though thankfully its evolved form is a little more cooperative." The red light coalesced into a dull-eyed Raichu, its face bleary and barely recognizable. It looked at Ash, confused. Heiter laughed. "Of course, you may find little common ground between you now. You've both undergone drastic and necessary revision. But no matter," Reiter activated the Pokeball, and as quickly as Ash's former friend had flickered in front of him it disappeared. "I plan on keeping it for myself. You can consider it payment for your medical costs. I daresay, you'd not have much use for it at this point- the larva you became attached to has been obliterated- snuffed out to make way for something more glorious." Something shone in Heiter's eye, something manic and religious. It glinted as he regarded Brock. "And how are we progressing?"

Brock's eyes were clenched and his mouth was a rigid silent scream. His face was stone in meditation of rage and his colon burned in Ash's mouth with the ferocity of retention. Heiter sighed. "Do not resist. You cannot evolve if you resist."

"W-won't let you b-break m-mmm…" Brock began, but it was too much effort. He sweat from the clenching, and the moisture made Ash's inhalations musky. Ash's stomach growled. The noise vibrated through his throat, a moan of hunger. It shook Brock's insides, and like clockwork his bowels burst. His face broke. He whispered, "I'm sorry, Ash."

Fecund and savoury, the slop gushed into Ash's waiting mouth. Bits of bratwurst floated in the muck, hot and thick on Ash's tongue, earthy and meaty like a fresh Brock stew. Brock's insides had purified the meat of its salt and preservatives- it was fresher than it had been going in. Compulsively, Ash's tongue wiggled in his meal, his tastebuds absorbing every possible morsel.

"Mmmm…" Ash shuddered involuntarily, ecstatically. He had yet to swallow. Pikachu was gone- not just stolen, but replaced. If Ash had done something when his friend had first started to turn ill, or even when the professor took him away… But now, he only had nutrition to worry about. Could this be his Act? Could he still define himself by submitting- by becoming a human grub?

"Ash, don't…" Brock pleaded weakly.

"Swallow." Heiter's voice was clam, inevitable. He did not look Ash in the eye- he let the word reverberate alone.

Hungrily, obediently, Ash swallowed. Brock began to sob. "What have you done to us?" he asked Heiter. "What have we let happen?"

"Such is the nature of larvae," Heiter answered almost tenderly. "They carry the seeds of their own destruction, and of the creation of something greater."

Brock shook his head. "No…" He picked up a glass fragment and looked at his reflection in it. "Not something greater. An insect. I've become an insect." He shook his head. "All this… My family. I abandoned my family in Pewter City, went off to try some foolhardy aventure, and now it's all gone to this. I deserved to become this. To die an insect."

The Professor's eyes flashed. He moved quickly, but Brock had already slashed his throat. Blood splattered onto the ground, splashing up onto the hem of the doctor's coat, and the human centipede collapsed sideways. As Brock twitched involuntarily Ash began to feel weakened as well, as if his pain was vibrating through him as well. The world darkened. Blurred. Died.

When their eyes opened again they were flat and empty. Heiter tossed a Max Revive in the trashcan, and leaned against the counter to see his creation rise back to life. His teeth split his face in two and his eyes glistened with joy. He began to chat rapidly in German, falling to his knees and kissing his revived creature. "It worked!" he told his pet. "The Max Revive healed your wounds. You've changed, creature!" He stood, wiped off his pants. "Now, as your master, I order you to speak!"

The professor's words were like Ash's own thoughts. He and Misty droned muffles into the anus before them. Only Brock's words were clear, his mouth moved as if by invisible hands. "Cater," he said. "Human Caterpie. Pie! Pie! Human Caterpie!" In these words Ash heard whole concerts and poems- communication beyond language. The thought flowed not just in his brain, but between the brains of his companions- inside the metabrain of the Human Caterpie.

"Wunderbar," Heiter beamed. "You've had a long day, creature." He produced a Pokeball from his pocket. "It is time you rested." The Pokeball opened, flashed white. As it sucked them in, Ash thought he could see all the colors.

Floating inside the Ballspace, Ash could see the Pastemembrane clearly for the first time. It was laid out like a videogame screen- flat, simple and blank. But that whiteness held so much color- monoliths of sheer data unavailable to its constituent. And above it lurked so much space! Unknown realms of hyper-color pressed warm on Ash's back. This game had no player- it may have, once, but He was either dead or negligent. Now there was only the Human Caterpie, and infinite progressions above. Everything could happen- everything must happen. The Ballspace proved it so.

A spec of prelarval paste-membrance Ash once mistook for himself scuttled below. It wore his old falseskins, the same unface. Ash wanted to share his revelations with it and commune in its limited tongue what infinite discoveries await. He opened his guthatch and released a code yellow Digesta-Mouth. It wormed its way towards the spec, white teeth like shattering rainbows. He would attempt communication.


End file.
